Throughout the 1920s, efforts to commercially develop the oil sands focused upon its possible use as a paving surface for roads and sidewalks.

The Scientific and Industrial Research Council of Alberta is founded.

Henry Marshall Tory, the first president of the University of Alberta, was instrumental in founding the Scientific and Industrial Research Council of Alberta, n.d. Source: University of Alberta Archives, 69-152-003

Karl Clark builds his first model hot-water separation plant.

Karl Clark and Sidney Blair built a model oil sands separation plant in the basement of the University of Alberta power plant. Source: University of Alberta Archives, 69-97-457

Sidney Kidder, Sidney Blair, George Hume, and Elmer Adkins (l to r) at the Edmonton portion of the Athabasca Oil Sands Conference at the University of Alberta, 1951Source: Provincial Archives of Alberta, PA3152

Great Canadian Oil Sands Ltd. incorporates.

Montreal-businessman Lloyd Champion incorporates Great Canadian Oil Sands Ltd. (GCOS) in 1953. Champion, shown here ca. 1960s, later sells most of his shares in the company before the GCOS plant opens under Sun Oil Company’s financing and leadership.Source: University of Alberta Archives, #83-160

Early in situ pilot tests begin on the Peace River and Cold Lake area oil sands deposits; underground experiments along the Cold Lake deposit lead to the development of the Cyclical Steam Stimulation (CCS) bitumen recovery method.

A cross-section of the Cold Lake area deposit shows the depth of the oil sands layer that makes the bitumen in this deposit recoverable only through in situ extraction methods. Source: Courtesy of Alberta Innovates

Great Canadian Oil Sands Ltd. begins production.

Great Canadian Oil Sands Ltd. plant during its first week of operation, north of Fort McMurray, Alberta, 1967 Source: Courtesy of Suncor

Partnership between industry and the Alberta Oil Sands Technology and Research Authority (AOSTRA) leads to commercialization of in situ recovery methods.

AOSTRA-sponsored technology develops through the late 1970s and early 1980s; the Cyclic Steam Stimulation bitumen recovery process injects steam through one well below the base of the oil sands, resulting in a heat zone that mobilizes the bitumen so that it can be pumped to the surface through a second production well. Source: Courtesy of Alberta Innovates

Thomas Draper and the McMurray Asphaltum and Oil Company

The first entrepreneur to really make paving the focus of commercial exploits in Alberta’s oil sands was Thomas Draper (d. 1962). Draper’s family had been involved in the petroleum industry in Petrolia, Ontario, since the 1860s when his father had established a business manufacturing oil machinery. As the southern Ontario oil fields began to decline, Draper started to consider other opportunities. He remembered a map of northern oil-bearing regions drawn for his father by none other than George Dawson, the Geological Survey of Canada scientist and later director, who had explored the Athabasca region in 1895. With a brother and sister already in Alberta, it was not long before Draper went to investigate the scene himself.

By the time Thomas Draper became interested in the Athabasca oil sands, it was no longer possible to make an outright purchase of land in the area. Even leasing land rights was difficult due

to government interest in the potential source of oil. Conditions of a lease included constructing a plant within eighteen months at a minimum cost of $30,000 as well as operating that plant for at least six continuous months of the year. Draper’s original application was denied, but he responded with characteristic persistence and by the end of 1922 had been granted Tar-sand Lease No. 20.

Draper’s efforts to meet the conditions of his lease were thwarted almost at the start. His first plant burned down in the summer of 1924, but he rebuilt and resumed operations. The focus of Draper’s activities shifted at this time away from extraction and towards mining and shipping, which makes sense given the recent decrease in prices that accompanied an increase in world oil production. Consequently, his lease terms were revised to permit him to ship a specified amount of oil sands in place of operating a plant.

Draper did not simply provide the raw oil sands for others to use; he engaged in his own surfacing work for about a dozen years, receiving contracts to pave roads and sidewalks in towns throughout Alberta and even in Ottawa. In fact, the name he had originally given his company, McMurray Asphaltum & Oil, Limited, might suggest that Draper had always had more faith in paving possibilities than in the likelihood of oil extraction. By the 1930s, however, Draper had to concede that, despite his valiant efforts, paving and surfacing with Alberta’s oil sands was just not a paying proposition. His natural persistence was ultimately trumped by a combination of factors, including widespread economic depression and the cost of freighting the raw material from its remote origin.

Draper returned to the family business in Michigan, where he died in 1962.

Thomas Draper may have abandoned his plant when he returned east, but his pioneering efforts live on in the name “Draper” given to the railway point adjacent to his operation. Originally the northern terminus of the Alberta and Great Waterways Railway and named “Waterways,” it was re-named after “Draper’s place” when the line was extended and the terminus moved west.

Draper, Alberta, is a reminder of the accomplishments of this entrepreneur who built the first experimental extraction plant in the Athabasca area and whose company was the first to market a commercial bitumen product.